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| The bishop of St Davids, Joanna Penberthy, with Barry Morgan (ABp), Andy John (Bangor) and Richard Pain (Monmouth) in 2017 Source: Anglican Journal |
In 2017 the then archbishop of Wales led the applause after the Church in Wales ordained its first woman bishop, Joanna Penberthy, the best person to be a bishop - in Barry Morgan's opinion!
Penberthy does not care much for views which do not accord with her own. She labels genuinely held opposing views on the ordination of women as discrimination. There is no engagement. She has described views contrary to her own simply as 'water off a duck's back' to her.
A proud Corbynista, Penberthy has issued a statement of apology following a 'private tweet' on 25 March about Conservative Party supporters in which she tweeted Never never never trust a Tory.
Looking again at the above 2017 photograph it sums up the disaster the Church in Wales has become. In 2018 bishop Penberthy wrote her 'Dear John' letter dispensing with the services of loyal, elderly male clergy.
The report on the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the early retirement of the former bishop of Monmouth, Richard Pain, is still awaited after being promised within six months in May 2020 while the divorced and re-married bishop of Bangor is in line to be the next archbishop of Wales.
Having achieved parity on the bench no doubt the three women bishops will be insisting that it is time for a woman to lead the Church in Wales, especially if another woman is elected to fill the Swansea and Brecon vacancy.
Postscript
A slap on the wrist for the bishop of St Davids, Joanna Penberthy in this Church in Wales statement:
“The Church in Wales expects all its clergy to engage robustly in public life. However, they need to do so in a way which is respectful, responsible and fair, acknowledging the breadth and diversity of political opinion within the Church. We do not support intemperate claims or poorly informed commentary and we urge all clergy to recognise that, as public office holders, there should be no expectation that personal views will be regarded as private.
“The Bishop of St Davids’ strong political views are well known. We recognise that she has apologised for causing offence and are pleased she has acknowledged the hurt and damage she has caused and deactivated her personal Twitter account.”
She has brought the Church in Wales into disrepute (again) especially as, one could argue, she sits in the Seat of Dewi Sant.
ReplyDeleteWhat will happen I wonder? Nothing I suspect.
Whamab
This is of course hate speech against the many of us who vote Tory and/or Brexit. It in effect makes those who disagree politically with the left leaning bench unwanted in their Church.
ReplyDeleteNever, never, never ever trust a Bishopesse.
ReplyDeleteHow do you know when a Bishopette isn't talking complete b*ll*cks?
ReplyDeleteHer lips aren't moving!
This illustrates the folly of clergy mixing party politics with their ministry. In the case of every cleric I have known who has done so, the politics trumps the priest. I could list them but won't. But in every case, the clergy concerned - not bad people in themselves - were led to make unfair, biased and one-sided claims. As a former Labour political candidate (if for not other reason) Joanna was the wrong choice for a bishopric.
ReplyDeleteSeemingly devout, she has caused hurt to retired clergy on several occasions, the last being the unnecessary removal of PTOs during the pandemic (now reinstated).
These, I am sorry to write, are not the loving pastoral acts of a shepherd.
She should resign as bishop and 'priest' and return to party political life whose principles she has not shaken off. I take no delight in writing this, yet there have been too many occasions when the sweeping - and in the present instance untrue - party political statement has been made public. Seriously, she needs to ponder whether her first allegiance us to Christ or the Labour Party.
Rob
Tories and Brexiteers on PCCs in the Diocese of St David's should follow their Bishop's example of blurring spirituality and party politics and vote to withhold their parish shares in order to defund the current bishop.
ReplyDeleteI don't affect to be non-partisan. In my book there are but two categories of folk who back the Tories in their post-2016 manifestation, and those two categories in my view can be summed up as ghouls and fools. The Conservative party is these days a sad and grim caricature of the party which I once supported in my distant youth, back in the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm a private citizen, and as such am perfectly free to express my robust opinion as I see fit. Whereas a bishop, whether intentionally or not, always to some degree speaks 'ex cathedra'. That simply goes with the job.
Had the bishop spoken - or tweeted - soberly on a particular issue, I'd be applauding her, at least to some degree, whether I agreed with her or not; because speaking soberly and with consideration is part of a bishop's role and commission.
But empty polemic along the lines of 'never never never trust a Tory' demeans the office of a bishop. If she wants to make a considered and thoughtful point, by all means make it. But make it and leave it at that. Core to the role of bishop is to be a focus of unity in the diocese. Making hasty and emotional generalized polemical statements will inevitably result in wholly negative consequences.
As, belatedly, she seems to have realized, given the subsequent apology and retreat, for now, from any future 'tweeting'. Sadly, since the damage has already been done, it's a bit late now.
During my time in the Church in Wales - 1964-1984 - although I thought there were one or two pretty dismal bishops on office over those years, I can't imagine any of them who would have been as thoughtless and heedless as Joanna Penberthy has been on this occasion. It's a sad turn of events.
As long as the alternative on offer was Abbott, Corbyn, McDonald and Momentum (surely Penberky would be far more at home there) a Boris landslide was almost as inevitable as much as Corbyn was unelectable.
DeleteThe recent local election results suggest Starmer is at least as useless as Corbyn.
Remarks such as "ghouls and fools" are as pathetic and spiteful as were those of "little Englanders" and "Gammon" directed at anyone who dared to vote for Brexit.
Penberky has revealed her true nature once more and is reaping what she has sown but, true to form and just like Corbyn, she lacks the moral fibre to do the decent thing.
You hit on a very salient point, John, when you mention the role of the bishop as being the focus for unity in the diocese. In May, 40,934 people in St David's Diocese voted for a Conservative Assembly candidate, according to the official election results. The bishop, by her ill-judged comments, has questioned their judgement and alienated them. The question has to be asked: how can she, with any integrity, hold on to office? If the Bishop of Bangor, as the senior bishop, is not going to hold her to account through a disciplinary hearing, then the good folk of St David's Diocese should. They should demand a Deanery Conference with the express purpose of debating and voting on a motion of confidence in the Bishop. It is their Diocese that she has brought into disrepute.
DeleteSeymour
In that case there are an awful lot of ghouls and fools about. Essentially (and to paraphrase Gore Vidal), the Tories merely are the right wing of the owner occupiers' party (Starmer's Labour and the Lib Dems are the left wing of the same party). There's not a great deal else to it. They all alike feel entitled to endless capital gains - paid for by someone else, of course - as if they were a God-given right, and they all consider that those unearned gains should be tax free.
DeleteI can understand why Joanna Penberthy wishes to express a visceral dislike of the Tories. She has spent an uncomfortably large part of her career in England, and may wish to expiate that (I daresay that the time passed near Wincanton and Bruton must have been especially uncomfortable), but there is also the long psychological shadow of the agitation between the Tory squirearchy of south Wales and their radical and usually nonconformist tenantry, or of successive governments - even Liberal governments - sending in the troops to suppress unrest in the Valleys. Indeed, by articulating her dislike of the Tories I imagine that she was attempting to express a form of sympathy for many of her near neighbours. I know, for instance, that the folk memory of the Rebecca Riots still lives on in much of north Pembrokeshire, for example.
Hatred as empathy: it's part of being an effective pastor these days.
You can try and plaster over the cracks, Froghole, but a bishop is supposed to be a pastor to everybody, not just the few. "You must care for all alike" - as the ordinal puts it.
DeleteSeymour
A plethora of responses, to which I'll try to respond soberly and respectfully. I pretty much agree with Seymour. The bishop is perfectly entitled to disagree with the 40,934 people in St David's diocese who voted for a Conservative Assembly candidate - I haven't cross-checked the figure, but I'll assume they're correct!
DeleteBut she must surely acknowledge that voters may well have voted as they did conscientiously and by conviction. At the very least she's in no position to assume thst they didn't.
And in that case she needs to offer a decisive argument which might convince those voters that they might have been mistaken. Simply shouting 'never never never trust a Tory' isn't going to achieve that. She needs to produce a calm, sober and decisive argument in defence of her thesis.
I agree with 'She's a disgrace' that 'Abbott, Corbyn, McDonald and Momentum' don't appesl, either to me or, to judge from the result of the December 2019 Westminster election, to the UK public at large. And I agree with his - her? - verdict in respect of Starmer.
But I don't see the contemporary Tory party, purged by the Bunterites of nearly all its rational and reasonable parliamentarians, as the only possible alternative. Right now, 'ghouls and fools' are exactly how I view supporters of the degenerated Conservative party, and I repeat that I say that as someone who was once - rather a long time ago - a Conservative supporter.
Not now. I view the supporters of the Bunterite regime precisely as nostalgic 'little Englanders' who yearn for a return to the vanished mid-19th century years when Lord Palmerston rattled Btitish imperial sabres and threatened the world with British military might, which back then was real enough but now has gone beyond any recall.
Soberly and respectfully?
DeleteHad you been so, you would have kept your "ghouls and fools" remark well and truly to yourself in the first place.
Seymour: Many thanks. I was not trying to paper over any cracks. I believe that the nature of the remarks made (which have been revealed on other websites in greater detail) not only completely discredits her standing as a focus for diocesan unity, but suggests that she is utterly unsuited to her office.
DeleteWhat seems even more alarming than the visceral hatred of a large section of the population is the staggering number of tweets she has been issuing. That suggests one of two things: (i) that she is unwilling to work on her day job and that her pretensions to 'hard work' are a fantasy; or (ii) that she has little or no work to do, in which case what need has she of so many diocesan officials? Either way, she has been wasting money that the Church in Wales claims it can ill afford. That, to me, is the even greater insult. It not only points to a staggering lack of pastoral sense, but also suggests that her workplace ethics are fundamentally awry (and that's putting it mildly). It is also insulting to those of her clergy who really are working hard for less pay and rations, and (it would seem) less job security.
@ What hypocrisy:
DeleteThe difference between me and the bishop of St Davids is that I'm a wholly private citizen whose opinions can't in any respect whatever be construed as 'the church's view'. Or of anyone else's view but my own.
Whereas a bishop can't ever make that assumption. Her comment has attracted this degree of publicity solely because it was made by a bishop. I don't have that need to be either sober or respectful, and in respect of the contemporary Conservative party I feel under no obligation to button my lip. Not least because their currently ascendant zealots manifestly feel under no obligation to button theirs!
Prior to the Westminster election of December 2019, I heard that the Tory MP for a constituency adjacent to my own had announced that he didn't propose to stand again. I didn't know him personally, but I was familiar with his career and his ideological position in the party, and as he was very much the sort of Conservative parliamentarian who had prompted me to support the Tory party years ago, I ventured to send him a sympathetic e-mail regretting his departure from the political stage and wishing him well for the future in whatever new career he might undertake.
He replied saying that he had recognized that there could now be no realistic place for him in the sort of Conservative party which had emerged under Johnson's leadership, and thus that standing down was the only rational option for him. He also commented sadly that he no longer recognized the party which he had originally joined years before.
I don't recognize it either.
You doth protest too much.
DeleteSurely that should be 'thou dost' ...?
DeleteIn any case, how much is 'too much'? Sometimes I muse over whether these days I protest too little!
Well done Mrs. Legg, one less contender for the top job perhaps?
ReplyDeleteIf, as is claimed, the Church in Wales does not support "intemperate claims or poorly informed commentary", why the hell is it taking so long to be permanently rid of the dud in the Llandaff Deanery?
ReplyDeletePossibly because the gay cabal will throw a temper tantrum and scweam and scweam and scweam until they make themselves sick?
DeleteLoathsome woman.
ReplyDeleteSurely tbat's not a self description?
DeleteTim
Impossible Tim.
DeleteI am self identifying as a male green tree frog this month and you muat all respect my point of view even though my own grasp on reality is so fragile.
Bishop Andy John must be fearing the worst. There is no doubt in my mind he will receive an unprecedented number of official complaints about Penberthy's offensive tweets. Does he ignore them? Or does he do the right thing and initiate disciplinary proceedings against her. The tweets were insulting, demeaning and hateful. It was not an isolated, temporary lack of judgment. It was a sustained attack of a significant proportion of the population of her See. It questioned their trustworthiness in crass, vitriolic and abusive manner utterly unworthy of a Bishop, let alone the 'successor' to Dyfrig and Dewi. She has brought the Church in Wales and the Episcopate into disrepute.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder if a case under safeguarding is warranted for those tory voters feeling safe under her ministry?
Whamab
Bishop Andy John has a well documented track record of simply ignoring official complaints.
DeleteWhy stop at Bishop Legg? There is a "Bishop" who practices a Lesbian relationship totally against the teachings of the Anglican and Christian Church. Surely the Diocese of Monmouth should be considered a Vacant Diocese.
DeleteYou're wrong - the Church in Wales accepts same-sex civil partnerships. Catch up Quill, you're out of touch and out of sympathy.
DeleteRuby
The Anglican Communion does not though and it is you and the Church in Wales who are out of step.
DeleteShape up.
I fear you are right in all your accusations, which is why I called for her resignation. This is not an isolated incident. Her party political ideology has overridden her Christian Faith. Utterly sad.
ReplyDeleteRob
Having closed her Twitter account, all she needs to do now is shut her mouth and end her "ministry".
ReplyDeleteIs it possible for her to continue to operate after revealing that she despises a large proportion of the diocese?
ReplyDelete1549
PP. It's a very sad state of affairs for a bishop to be in, especially when one has forgotten personal counsel.
ReplyDeleteBut, what can be done? Resignation probably not a remote chance, translation possible but, in Wales, over to SB would be difficult as SB is largely Tory. Then out of Wales? Can't see her being on the CofE list-although their are several Sees now vacant in the Cantur province.
In the role of Senior Bishop Andy John has quite a problem given the track record discussed widely in this article. However, he now has a formidable wife, one might even say a Mrs Proudie? So he may be more in discipline mode.
However, who would a potential discipline panel be lead by? Do we have more than 'yes persons'? Would her fellow Lady Bishops be adverse to such a move.
At this stage rather unlike Winchester diocese, the bench/RB might wisely act in this early stage to prevent the catastrophic events now ensuing in the See of Winchester. Time will indeed tell
Let us not forget that Donald Soper held the conservative party completely in contempt. He said the only way a Tory could get to heaven was by a circuitous route.
ReplyDelete(The Last Wesleyan by Mark Peel, page 29)
Never trust a married woman who doesn't take her husband's surname.
ReplyDeleteADMIN reminder:
ReplyDelete'Anonymous commentators must use a pseudonym if their comments are intended for publication and must not be linked to commercial sites.
I've written to Bangor to ask if disciplinary action against St.Davids is even being considered. Should I be disappointed that I have not had a reply?
ReplyDeleteTry writing to the Church in Wales' Chief Executive.
ReplyDeleteTim
I am totally shocked by the comments on this thread. The Bishop has apologised, taken down her social media - so move on. The expectation of a resignation is a totally vindictive and mysogynistic one. In the history of the Church in Wales there have only been two resignations from the bench and both of them relating to sexual misconduct (one for cottaging and the other for speculation (at the time) of an inappropriate relationship. +Joanna has only put into a tweet what many of us agree with - the Tory party is no friend of those whose priority is justice and equality.
ReplyDeleteRuby
Whereas the Labour Party is For the many, not the Jew.
DeleteRuby, I am most certainly not misogynistic. The point you miss is that a bishop is supposed to care for all in his / her diocese regardless of political affiliation. If you, personally, were to advise the public to "Never trust a Tory", you could justifiably say that you are speaking from a private standpoint. I don't know you, so I would be free, if I so chose, to dismiss your musings as those of a disgruntled person. The Right Reverend Doctor Joanna Penberthy, with the Diocesan Crest at the side of her name, was determined to let everyone know exactly who she was. Much worse, her diocese contains 40,000 people who voted Tory at the May elections. How can she care for all alike, as she promised at her consecration, when she writes disparaging comments about 40.000 of them on Twitter? You cannot simply dismiss it with "Well, she has taken her Twitter account down; and that should be an end to it." No cleric is a private person. The result of her behaviour is that she has brought the Church in Wales, her sacred office and her diocese into disrepute. If Father John in Abercwmscwt were to have done something similar, he would have to face a disciplinary tribunal, and would likely be sacked. Why should a bishop be any different?
DeleteSeymour
For some of us she isn't a Bishop anyway and never can be.
Delete@ Seymour:
DeleteReading your post, it struck me that your perspective on this affair seems to be more or less identical to my own.
Even though your antipathy towards the contemporary Conservative party may well be less than mine!
Come to Long Term Labour Abused Bridgend if you want an impartial view. I will live in St David's and Jo can live in my semidetached, run down vicarage. She can collect the hypodermics from the churchyard, I'll gaze on her daffs (not a metaphor). I'll take her (40k+ salary and pension, she can look forward to a retirement without a home. On second thoughts, I would miss the real life of a priest and the joy of my congregation.
DeleteWell, Ruby. Why mysogynistic ? And, just for the record, Bangor has now replied. I wonder if he reads posts on this site ?
ReplyDelete@Ruby you fail to realise the damage done. Those offended on this blog may or may not represent but a miniscule portion of tories in St David's or the province. Us 'moving on as you' put it is not going to make any difference.
ReplyDeleteYour support of her tweets is utterly shocking to me and shows you want to demonise all who disagree just like Penberthy herself. Hardly just or equitable.
Also not all who have been insulted by her tweets are misogynistic. I support wholeheartedly women in ministry but certainly their preferement based on gender. We've seen the effects of that all too well this last week.
Whamab
Should be 'certainly not their preferement' Whamab
DeleteI do trust Tories, says Bishop of St Davids after Twitter row
ReplyDeletehttps://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/11-june/news/uk/i-do-trust-tories-says-bishop-of-st-davids-after-twitter-row
In May last year, in response to polling showing voting intentions she wrote: “A very sad indictment of British electorate that so many still want to vote Tory. Absolutely appalling. I am ashamed of each and every one of them.” The previous year she wrote: “How can anyone with any moral fibre stand as a Tory candidate?”
Not ashamed enough of herself to do the decent thing and resign though?
Storm in a tea cup - if you guys are getting worked up about this then you need to get our more. "Bringing the Diocese into disrepute" - laughable! Move on and get yourselves out into the sun and enjoy the sunshine.
ReplyDeleteRuby
In the dystopian world of Ruby, Joanna's only mistake was to apologise.
ReplyDeleteWhamab
Poor Ruby, I was waiting for someone to claim, implausibly, that the criticism of Joanna Penberthy was driven by misogyny. Not so! What is so concerning is the state of mind that causes someone - in this case a serving bishop - to publish tweets that communicate in slogans, labelling people black or white according to how they embrace her extrene left wing political principles. That is pitiful as well as unkind. It is not the Joanna seen in her services of prayer on the diocesan videos.
ReplyDeleteWhich is the real Joanna? A great gulf separates them.
I wish the bishop no harm; however, she needs to move on, even sort herself out. From the start, I sensed the job was too much for her. It was certainly too great a temptation to her political sympathies. It is hard to see how she could dig berself out of the hole she has slipped into. Harm has been done. Better for everyone if she went. It certainly will not be smoothed out by frivolous comments from you, Ruby.
Rob
One doesn't believe she just "slipped into" the hole so much as jumped in deliberately with both feet hoping to make the largest possible splash, and she certainly got her splash.
DeleteIf you read my initial remark you will see that I see +Joanna's treatment on this page as entirely driven by Misogyny.
DeleteRuby
And, Ruby, you failed to make your case - then or subsequently.
DeleteRob
It strikes me that we are confusing two (or more) separate issues here.
DeleteOne is whether a senior clergy member should make known their political viewpoint; and, if so, how they should express their beliefs.
The other - which many, despite all theological arguments to the contrary, will regard as misogynistic - is whether a woman can truly be an Anglican bishop.
ISTM that Joanna made an unwise 'throwaway' remark. How that links with previous political utterances, I do not know; and I accept that she has alienated or antagonised some people within her Diocese. But one must ask if she would have been subject to the same level of criticism that some have voiced here if she had been male? I suspect not.
His --Darkness byzantine Bazza Morgan was certainly subjected to far more criticism as was the philandering Karl Cooper when caught with his pants down wi
Deleteth his Chaplainess Randy Mandy.
As you would know from this blog if you weren't such a latecomer.
It doesn't sound to me as if those issues are in any way comparable.
Delete"But one must ask if she would have been subject to the same level of criticism that some have voiced here if she had been male? I suspect not."
DeleteHoisted on your own petard.
Baptist Trainfan. I expect that if it was one throwaway remark it would not have caused a furore. The problem is it was hundreds and thousands of tweets and retweets that were offensive.
DeleteLlechryd
"It doesn't sound to me...."
DeleteWell it wouldn't unless you did some historical reading.
Wondering ? Is Ruby, actually Joanna ?
ReplyDelete++ William Temple was, in many peoples' view, one of the greatest Archbishops of the C20. Although I doubt if he expressed his political views in quite the same way as Joanna Penberthy, they were well-known; he was a member of the Labour Party for at least seven years (although not when he was Archbishop AFAIK) and President of the Workers' Educational Association. It has been said that, when he died unexpectedly, "London's Tory Times and Communist Daily Worker mourned him equally".
ReplyDeleteYour comment calls to my mind a memory of William Wand, who was bishop of London back in the 1950s. He developed the practice of writing for his diocesan leaflet a series of occasional reflections on issues of the day - some of them issues within contemporary Anglicanism and Christianity more widely, and some on social and political issues of the moment, both in Britain and across the wider world. A selection of them were subsequently published, which is how I came across them: Wand's heyday as a diocesan was rather before my time!
DeleteWand's take on such matters was not infrequently controversial, both on church topics and wider societal issues: he was a definite anglo-catholic which coloured his perspective and displeased some, and he didn't hesitate to adopt stances politically and socially which were contentious and, inevitably, unpopular with some.
But he saw it as part of his ministry as his diocese's chief pastor to express his mind, in a careful, detailed and reasoned way, on issues in terms which might be interesting and comprehensible to a thoughtful parishioner who might like to read them.
When I read the published selection of his opinion pieces two decades ot more after he'd written them, I thought that he'd succeeded in that aim. He always made his view crystal clear. But he set out the reasons why he was taking that view with equal clarity, and none of his opinion pieces, as I recall them, ever utilized what we these days would term a soundbite or a slogan!
And that's how I think a bishop must 'do it' in the context of th eriscopal role when taking arguably controversial positions. Archbishop Temple's time was even earlier than Bishop Wand's and I have to admit that I haven't read any of his writings. But from what I've read of him, that's how he seems to have 'done it' too.
Thank you John. There have of course been times when "senior Christians" have believed it was right to be controversial and "speak truth to power", indeed they have felt it to be their Christian duty - Romero of El Salvador or Luwum of Kenya come to mind, as do (dare I say) the people who put together "Faith in the City". But, as you rightly say, they need to put forward a well-ordered and logical case rather than a soundbite. BTW I did once have a copy of Wand's "History of the Christian Church" on my bookshelf!
DeleteThe selection of Wand's diocesan leaflet opinion pieces was published under the title of 'Beauty and Bands', a rather obscure and esoteric Old Testament text which he chose for one of them: Zechariah 11:7 in the authorized version.
DeleteI doubt it's still in print so long after its - and his - time, but it might be still available second hand. I dispensed with my copy some years ago as part of my process of divesting from superfluous stuff once I hit my seventies.
Apologies, BT - that should be the 'revised version', and not the 'authorized version'.
DeleteDoes anyone know a good printer? I want to order 5000 copies each of the poster and the badge 'Conservative Lives Matter!'
ReplyDeleteRob
Hilarious ��
DeleteYou can use my printer.
Speak to the MP for Preseli in the Bishop's Diocese - he's good with IT and is a Tory MP you can trust (but if you're 19 and applying for a job, don't put your mobile number on the CV). Never, never, never trust a (male) Tory with your mobile number.
DeleteRuby
Ah, Ruby, you provide ever more confirmation that you are one of Joanna's cronies. At least Ruth has a sense of humour.
DeleteRob
As people will have guessed, my political views tend to the Left rather than the Right. But the local (Tory) M.P. at my last place was a Christian man of intelligence and integrity with whom I had several good conversations; as was the M.P. in the next Constituency, a doctor, who knowingly threw away his chance of political glory by strongly taking issue with the then Health Minister's policies. There are others who I genuinely respect although I would beg to differ from their views. But I have to say I have little truck with the present Government and its ways.
ReplyDeleteYou and me both!
DeleteAB: St Davids clergy have received a letter from their bishop repeating her apology and stating that she 'has agreed to' take some time off to 'reflect, recuperate and respond appropriately'.
ReplyDeleteForgive me if I am being uncharitable, but is 'recuperate' appropriate?
Rob
The nasty woman has already had months in which to "reflect, recuperate and respond appropriately" by resigning.
DeleteShe has all the moral fibre and backbone of an amoeba.
The statement is to be read to congregations 'without comment'. And, if not, is there a threat of disciplinary action?
ReplyDeleteTim
Come back Bishop Wyn!
ReplyDeleteDominic
All this does not pass the 'smell test'. I can't help thinking the bench are negotiating with Joanna as how to proceed. All outside the disciplinary procedures. Its simple: has she given just cause for scandal? Clearly, yes. Have people complained? Oh yes, probably in their dozens, if not more. Is there a prima facie case to answer? Without a doubt. If so, she should face discipline as would anyone else. I hope +Bangor and the bench are not creating a shadow-process in order to deal with this. They are not supposed to make it up as they go along are they?
ReplyDeleteWhamab
Smell test?
DeleteThe stink of the swamp has been overpowering for literally decades but few heeded the warnings until it was too late and His --Darkness had done the damage.